Michel2Bec

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• Commented on The crazy years
  macOS server : It apparently went from life support to death watch : https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/29/farewell_to_macos_server/...
• Commented on The Day After
  "Almost impossible." Possible : Sarkozy is loathed by part of the population, a Sarkozy - Le Pen face up may end up as Le Pen....
• Commented on The Day After
  Not what I expected, even if I'm a strong believer in idiotcracy. The turkeys happily voted for Christmas in England, for thanksgiving in USA and I pray they don't vote for Noël in France (I'm french and my wife is...
• Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
  I don't think it's that scary (in 0 G it can be solved with a centrifuge - 2001 Space Odyssey method), but I was just highlighting one of the many technical details that space cadets tend to paper over. It...
• Commented on What else can you do with a Big Dumb Booster?
  "non-astronaut phenotypes" : fetus : some studies have already been done on the subject. remembering from an article I read many years ago, there is a problem with development after the blastocyst stage, from lack of chemical convection. In the...
• Commented on Administrative note
  "(a) rewriting THE DELIRIUM BRIEF (because the Brexit lunacy put my insufficiently-over-the-top political satire subplot in the shade)," Life as a satirist is hard when the political arena looks like an Onion article. I have to double check all the...
• Commented on Updating a classic
  "Sounds as though someone escaped from wikipedia." Every human endeavor starts up with enthusiasm and ends up in bureaucracy and power grabbing....
• Commented on Updating a classic
  You will notice that many of the above tactics are also those recommanded in this guide : "How to commit fraud and get away with it: A Guide for CEOs" http://www.macroresilience.com/2013/12/04/how-to-commit-fraud-and-get-away-with-it-a-guide-for-ceos/ and this is not a coincidence - the TLDR...
• Commented on Three Unexpectedly Good Things VR Will Probably Cause
  "I'm sure that somewhere, someone drowned from drinking too much water. " Exactly : it's called water intoxication / water poisoning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication (never underestimate the number of ways the universe is out to get you)...
• Commented on Rise Of The Trollbot
  "169: Re safe spaces ... It's weird when I run across the concept as something institutionalized in academia. I'm not convinced the problem is as big as a host of pundits make it to be. It's even weirder to hear...
• Commented on Markov Chain Dirty To Me
  "Thanks for straightening me out about Bowman vs. Monsanto. I did not realize he was deliberately selecting the roundup-ready seeds. " I did not know that either, but I'm not surprised at all : when there is possibility to cheat,...
• Commented on But it's not April 1st yet!
  "That's an odd statement. The "bitness" of your OS and applications has zero to do with the number of bits used for security and encryption." No, as far as security goes, this comment from Max™ argument is true according to...
• Commented on But it's not April 1st yet!
  "I reckon (for Greg's enlightenment) that it's reasonable to say that modern 64-bit machines gobble RAM like there's no tomorrow." Rule of thumb for 32bits vs 64bits is 30% higher memory consuption for C / C++ and similar languages. This...
• Commented on Defining space opera
  You may have been beaten to it : if found this thru a quick web search for difluorothiotimoline : http://www.island.net/~hamill/S%20F%20Subject_Index.htm fake research paper "The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline" Isaac Asimov Astounding Science Fiction Mar. 1948...
• Commented on Defining space opera
  Well I agree that the post i showed is dated, he had changed his blog adress and it took me some time to locate it. In the comments of this one, there are various interprattions of what may be wrong...
• Commented on Defining space opera
  " Most of the rest die in "The Valley of Death," " There is also the fact that our legal standards of risk taking have evolved, many drugs in current use would not cross the valley today. And many people...
• Commented on Defining space opera
  By your definition, is the Majipoor cycle space opera ? (romanticist : check, large scale : check, but all on oen planet)...
• Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
  "(But I want to scratch the itch that Iain M. Banks ain't around to scratch these days ...)" I wish you good luck and godspeed. I like most of what you write (for some reason the merchant prince books do...
• Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
  "BTDT" : I know, I read the "Freyaverse" books, so your space opera will be in it or into a close clone ?...
• Commented on Towards a taxonomy of cliches in Space Opera
  My biggest beef with "realistic"(1) space opera is : How does it start ? 1) What is the motivation for taking the incredibly risky bet of living in fragile space habitats for generations ? (and expensive in term of ressources...
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  First time I laught at reading a WP article. On the other hand, in french, we call this "shooting on the ambulance"....
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  "Only the English can confuse corporal punishment with sexual desire. Or conflate." Not exactly : germans are a lot into it too. Specially with a large helping of scat (I forgot where I read that german, when they have psychosomatic...
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  Hey but think of they keystroke "productivity" measure shooting thru the roof !!! This has been designed by Catbert....
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  "psychopathic publishing executive " : Hasn't your publisher chained you to that : http://www.themostdangerouswritingapp.com/ , yet ?...
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  "The idealistic leader may in fact remain idealistic, but somewhere below them a guy in mirrorshades will be making Hard Choices to Defend Freedom/The Republic/The Revolution (delete as applicable), and they don't feel the need to tell the boss about...
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  "with the handle made out of a Millennial's thighbone, these being rather too common on the ground. And we won't talk about what they're making their pipes from..." I rarely find people more pessimistic than me....
• Commented on Holding pattern (part N ...)
  "Yeah; Stalin's management style was ... singular." And yet, Stalin almost certainly started as a starry eyed idealist. Getting into the bolshevik before the revolution was not a career move, it was dangerous, a one way ticket to Siberia. (Indeed,...
• Commented on Silence this week ...
  "So you were 27 times more likely to be executed if you were in the British Army during WW1 than if you were a civilian." ==> "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." (I forgot who...
• Commented on Silence this week ...
  "Is it would have a strong human Theory of Mind -- it would be able to interact with us and predict how we'd react to stimuli far better than we can interact with each other". This is basically the story...
• Commented on Silence this week ...
  "the only country in the world to run narrow-gauge trains on standard-gauge track" : curse of being the first mover. You get to deal with the legacy of early design....